It’s often said that the British are always laughing and you will notice their bizarre sense of dark humour everywhere you go. People tell jokes at funerals and make comedies involving suicide. People here drink more than anywhere else in Europe, fight on the streets outside bars with amazingly regularity and have the highest teenage pregnancy rates on the continent. People love football, are amazingly ethnically, culturally and religiously diverse and seem to produce more rock bands per capita than any other country on the planet.

The population is around 60 million, which is the third largest in Europe behind the Germans and the French; it has been growing steadily over recent years due to the increased fertility rate, extended life expectancy and immigration. Nearly twenty five percent of the population live around the London area in the South East. This part of the county is the most prosperous and suffered less from the industrial decline in the twentieth century.